Remember what the State Department’s Acting Inspector General said about Ambassador Gration’s email in 2012
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Tag Archives: Kenya
Mazrui and Barkan: a tribute – Journal of Contemporary African Studies – from Makau Mutua
Regular readers will remember my fondness for the late Joel Barkan with whom I shared some history with the 2007 Kenyan election tragedy, and to whom, along with Peter Oriare, I have dedicated my “War for History” series here. Professor Makua Mutua has written an astute and moving tribute to Joel and to Ali Mazrui as African Studies leaders who passed away in 2014 to leave a hugely consequential legacy. Without further ado, please read:
Here is my Joel Barkan Tribute from 2014.
Top new posts of 2015
Merry Christmas
My last post corresponded to the sixth anniversary of this blog, so this in the seventh time I’ve had the opportunity to wish you a Merry Christmas and a wonderful Festive Season.
I’ve been immersed in “real life” at home and catching up on my reading rather than writing; in the upcoming weeks I’ll be trying to follow the crises in Burundi and South Sudan and the election in Uganda in addition to the ongoing dramas in Kenya but will probably not offer much comment.
Let me reiterate what I said in this Christmas post last year:
This is going to be a challenging time for many Kenyans who will be legitimately concerned about being vulnerable to terrorists, and those who will be legitimately fearful of the forces of their own government. I trust that the spirit of the season will touch most Kenyans to continue to look out for each other regardless of the animus and contrary ambitions of a relative few.
Jamhuri Day no. 52–Secret “visa bans” are too little, too late from the USA to revive Kenya’s democratic spirit of 2002
US Secretary of State Kerry issued a short perfunctory statement of congratulations to Kenyans for Jumhuri Day, mentioning his visit to Kenya in May, but not President Obama’s visit in July.
I get tired of expressing my disappointment in my government’s approach to relations with Kenya’s government and informal power structure and I did not have much to say about Obama’s visit. One particular item that got marginal attention in the Kenyan media and that I chose to ignore was an actual signed agreement between the Government of Kenya and the Government of the United States styled as a “Joint Commitment to Promote Good Governance and Anti-Corruption Efforts in Kenya“. There is actually a fair bit of detail to this agreement in terms of process, meetings, communications, and such, aside from the platitudes suggesting that the same people with life-long track records of comfort with corruption in Kenya were suddenly born again GooGoos (GooGoo being an old American slang term for “good government” types, referring to reformers who opposed corrupt urban political “machines” in large cities such as Chicago and my hometown of Kansas City).
In spite of the temporary boost to the UhuRuto administration from President Obama’s Nairobi visit, there has been a rising chorus of Kenyan grassroots umbrage to the extreme corruption levels as more and more scandals have emerged without, still, any actual sucessful prosecutions of major figures (meaning major players in either business or politics, or most likely both together) for any of the known thievery.
In the wake of the Pope’s visit, Uhuru–who has made conspicuous use of Roman Catholic photo props in his campaign and PR imagery since the contested 2013 vote–was said to have been moved or shamed to take some action, along the lines of the kinds of things that he had already agreed to do in his July agreement with the United States, to fight “graft”. Perhaps. “You just never know,” as some older conservative friends in Mississippi said when I tried to explain back in 2008 that everyone in Kenya knew that Barack Obama was born in the United States, not in Kenya.
What about on the United States side? Does our government really want to change things now? Here is what I would need to see to be persuaded that we have decided to change the game: 1) public follow up on the Goodyear bribes paid to public officials in Kenya [months have gone by now with no prosecutions in Kenya reported in the press after the parent company in the US turned itself in to the SEC and the Justice Department]; 2) public follow up on the bribery of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission in the 2013 election procurements [I finally submitted a Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) request a few months ago to USAID on the procurements we paid for through IFES and for our dealings with the vendor Smith & Ouzman which was convicted in the UK of bribing the Kenyan IEBC–no documents or substantive response yet]; 3) public follow up on the issue of unnamed Kenyan officials being among those bribed by Chinese interests at the UN in New York resulting in U.S. indictments.
It has been credibly reported based on leaks that the new “visa bans” on travel to the US by Kenyan officials are quite extensive. Great. But we do this type of thing, if not quite to this extent, periodically. Over the years it obviously has not added up to any strategic progress even if there may (or may not) have been a few tactical successes here or there. Bottom line is that I don’t think you can really fight corruption with secrecy–you have to chose your priorities. And for my government to ignore the cases that have been publicly exposed in which we have some direct stake leaves me unconvinced that we have actually changed our priorities from 2007 and 2013 when I was in Kenya to see for myself.
One thing that we could do to make sure we are “practicing what we preach” on the governance side is for Congress to have oversight hearings about how we are carrying out the July 25 “Joint Agreement”.
The fever ailing the American body politic stems in some part from the infection of Kenya “birtherism” from 2008
We have a hegemonic two party political system in the United States. Neither party attracts the identification of a consistent majority of voters, yet most “independent” voters primarily vote for one party or the other rather than choosing between candidates on a case-by-case basis. During the period of their hegemony the Republican and Democratic parties have changed their regional, ideological, cultural and racial make-up without losing their shared control of substantially all of government at a federal and state level.
At present, American politics is primarily about culture, which is reflected in what political scientists identify as an ideological separation in which the two parties in Congress no longer substantially overlap, especially due to the defeat of liberal and then moderate Republicans especially in the Northeast and Midwest and the success of “tea party” and other movements and political funding mechanisms that have moved Republican representation well to the right. At the same time, the Democratic Party has to a lesser but perhaps growing degree moved left and does not seriously try to compete in large swaths of the country that were its traditional strongholds.
The specific policy issue that constitutes a near absolute “litmus test” divide between the parties remains abortion, which is primarily determined in the courts and is little legislated on at the federal level. While each of the parties has reinforced the rigor of the divide on that issue in recent years they have moved to “sort” across a whole diverse range of issues– most any issue that arises really.
This divide between the parties, culturally derived, then generates reverberation back into the broader culture. While most Americans don’t care that intensely about politics and politicians as such, we seem to me to be becoming more disputatious about issues that come to the fore in politics and governance, more suspicious of each other, less willing to accord legitimacy to opinions we don’t reflexively agree with, and less inclined to listen and learn in a way that would support mutual persuasion and/or compromise.
Shortly after returning to the United States from Kenya in the summer of 2008 I remember being struck in reading Rick Perlstein’s then new sociopolitical history Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America how glad I was to have been too young to have had to really deal with the depth of divisions of “The Sixties” and the “culture wars” and “generation gap” of that era. Unfortunately these divisions have been gearing up since that summer.
Some of this is surely just the ordinary social cycle, some of it is the inevitable stress of an unprecedented era of seemingly permanent war, along with economic trauma from globalization and the finance crisis, but just as the political strategies of Richard Nixon and George Wallace and others had broader consequences of historical import from the late 1960s and 1970s, the decision of so many leaders and elected officials in the Republican Party to actively or passively indulge and humor the bizarre conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was secretly born in Kenya and somehow smuggled into the country as an infant is to me a factor that future historians may view as quite profound.
Obama was a candidate of thin experience with significantly opaque aspects to his background with some legitimate controversies–this was always fair game politically for the Clintons and for Republicans. But, when you are mute or noncommittal when conspiracy theorists turn the basic facts of what could be seen as a uniquely American success story aside from divides of policy, party and ideology into a sinister, evil conspiracy resulting in a wholly illegitimate and unlawful usurpation of the White House by the clear winner of the election you cannot expect to easily manage the impacts over time. Surely any upstanding, patriotic citizen who actually believes the conspiracy is duty-bound to oppose the usurper?
Most senior Republicans could never have believed any of this–I am afraid they just did not have the courage to confront it because they knew it had profound traction at the grassroots as consistently confirmed by polling. John McCain as Obama’s GOP opponent (and International Republican Institute chairman) was notably above the nonsense personally but he was also notably outside the cultural mainstream of the party even by 2008 and more so now. The problem was not so much the campaign as the deligitimization of the elected President.
Thus now we have Donald Trump, unapologetic carnival barker of the birther conspiracy from its revival in 2011, as the dominant front runner for the Republican nomination for President to the chagrin of probably most people of his generation who have actually been involved in the party over the years. Whatever happens from here on out in this particular election campaign which remains partially in flux, the nature and trajectory of one of our only two parties, at the least, has been profoundly impacted. And the consequences will continue to play out well after the next President takes office.
Podesta Group lobbies Washington Post, New York Times, Politico, Roll Call, Foreign Policy, Guardian, Financial Times, Reuters, Washington Diplomat for Kenyatta Gov’t
Kenyan taxpayers paid The Podesta Group of Washington, DC for public relations/lobbying contacts with these media outlets on behalf of their Government in the first half of 2015. The Podesta Group provided similar or related lobbying services at the same time for the governments of Azerbaijan, Myanmar, Iraq, India, and Vietnam, among various others, aside from their nongovernmental clients.
I’m certainly not suggesting that there is anything wrong with the Government of Kenya spending tax dollars on working media contacts when it isn’t paying teacher’s salaries or meeting basic human needs in health care, for instance. After all, the United States and various multinational and other foreign donors can be counted on to spend their taxpayer dollars to help ameliorate the consequences of this choice by the Government of Kenya.
Kenyans for Peace with Truth and Justice statement to ICC Assembly of States Parties
Kenyan civil society groups who have been carrying the lonely burden of advocating for judicial accountability for the organized portion of the post election violence once again stood in the face of state power this week.
The Kenyan government sought to divert the International Criminal Court proceedings against Deputy President William Ruto for crimes against humanity through appeal to the Assembly of State Parties to overrule the Court on the admissibility of certain evidence and through a separate “investigation” of the prosecution.
I don’t know personally whether or not Ruto is guilty of the things he is accused of, but there appears to a great fear on the part of Ruto and the current political leadership that he might well be convicted by the judges. Certainly Kenya’s senior politicians would know better than I the details of who committed the underlying acts forming the basis of the charges.
Statement By KPTJ at the 14th Assembly Of States Parties Of The Rome Statute
Kenyans for Peace with Truth and Justice is a collective of over 30 civil society organisations, which has been seeking accountability for the post election violence of 2008.
Mr./Mme. President Once again, this Assembly is being called upon to discuss concerns raised by the Republic of Kenya regarding the application of the Rome Statute in on-going trials before the International Criminal Court. This time Kenya is asking the Assembly to make a finding on the application of Rule 68.
Kenya is also asking for an ad hoc mechanism of five independent jurists to audit the Prosecutor’s witness identification and recruitment processes in a petition endorsed by some 190 parliamentarians.
The Kenyan state thus desires that this Assembly make a finding on a matter that is a pending decision in the proceedings of the Court. Such a finding would constitute a direct and wholly unwarranted interference by this Assembly with the judicial mandate of the court.
It also creates a very dangerous precedent – that States Parties with active situations and cases before the Court can reverse decisions or leverage political pressure on the Court through the ASP, to take decisions in favour of the States’ positions.
This is not the first time that Kenya has asked the Assembly to discuss a matter that is already before the court. During the 12th Assembly in this very hall, discussions resulted in the amendment of Rule 134 of the Rules of Procedure and Evidence and Rule 68 was also approved.
The request to discuss the Prosecutor’s strategy of identification and engagement of witnesses is an escalation of the failed request made at ASP 13 for a discussion on the ‘ICC Prosecutor’s conduct’. States refused to have this discussion then. The present request for an ad hoc mechanism should be rejected as an affront to the independence of the Prosecutor’s office
Witness tampering
It is important that this Assembly steps back and considers the context in Kenya in relation to which the discussions about Rule 68 and the conduct of the Prosecutor are taking place.
The Kenyan cases before the ICC have been affected by unprecedented levels of witness interference characterized by bribery and even elimination. In the Kenyan Case 2, The Prosecutor versus Uhuru Kenyatta, 8 members of the Mungiki militia group who allegedly interacted with Mr. Kenyatta during the post-election violence in Kenya in 2008 were reported to have been killed or forcibly disappeared.
Also, intermediaries for Mr. Kenyatta allegedly approached three Mungiki insiders, attempting to enlist them to identify other witnesses who would be willing to give exonerating evidence in favour of Mr. Kenyatta.
In the Ruto case, the Prosecutor has alleged that 16 of the original 42 witnesses have either been killed, recanted or turned hostile. One of the witnesses who died, Meshack Yebei, was abducted in Eldoret, the home area of Mr. Ruto, and turned up dead in another part of the country that is about 1000 kilometres away.
Arrest warrants
In an attempt to bring accountability for the interference with witnesses in Kenya, the ICC has issued three arrest warrants against three Kenyan nationals. However, none of these has been executed, as the Kenyan government has erected multiple legal hurdles to defeat the surrender of the accused persons to the ICC. This is in clear violation of its duty to cooperate with the ICC.
Who killed the witnesses and why? Who wanted them killed and why?
We do not currently know the answers to these questions. Whether or not the questions can be answered is directly tied to the conduct of the Kenyan state.
While showing no interest in the toxic domestic situation in the country, which has intimidated and silenced witnesses, the Kenyan state deployed a massive political strategy t influence how the cases from Kenya are handled. This has involved creating a highly charged, divisive and volatile political atmosphere.
This Assembly is now in effect being asked by Kenya to compound and reward the silencing of witnesses, and the shielding from accountability of those against whom the court has issued arrest warrants.
It would be a travesty if this august Assembly lent its powers to Kenya’s campaign to shield from accountability those who — because they have ultimate power over the country– have already used their positions to delay or defeat accountability for the crimes committed in the country.
This Assembly must think about the victims of the crimes committed in Kenya. Already, the Kenyatta case has been brought to an early end because of interference with witnesses. The underlying reason for the Rule 68 controversy is witness tampering. This Assembly must not condone it.
This Assembly must speak out clearly in defense of the independence of the Court. Cases being tried by the Court must be tried in the courtroom, not in the corridors of the ASP.
It is important for States Parties to understand that Kenya’s interventions are not aimed at strengthening the Court. Kenya continues to employ double-speak where it pledges to cooperate with the Court while at the same time actively frustrating it from continued investigation and prosecution of the cases at home and orchestrating a sustained international campaign against it abroad.
The Kenya State’s endgame, as publicly declared by various officials including the President, is the immediate, and premature, termination of the case against William Ruto and Joshua Sang, just as was witnessed with the Kenyatta case.
Let us remember also that Kenya has to date not offered domestic solutions for justice, accountability and meaningful and equitable reparations for the victims of post-election violence. Over 1,133 were killed, thousands sexually assaulted, maimed and over 600,000 displaced.. The Director of Public Prosecutions says a majority of these crimes cannot be prosecuted, a statement reiterated by the President.
Mr. President, Kenya’s domestic politics continue to define and inform its interventions on the ICC and at Assemblies of States Parties. As Kenya enters another pre-election season, characterized by inflamed rallies, hate speech and vituperation of the ICC and the Prosecutor we remind this Assembly that the ICC still remains the only viable hope for justice, truth-telling, accountability and reparations for the victims of the post-election violence in Kenya and the only credible deterrent against future similar crises.
KPTJ/19/11/15
Is it still easy to buy Kenyan identity documents?
In October 2013 The Standard ran an investigative expose on the readily available purchase of Kenyan identity documents including birth certificate, national identity card, school certificates, drivers license or certificate of good conduct from the Kenyan Police.
This was shortly after the Westgate attack and many years after the disclosure of the Anglo Leasing national security procurement fraud schemes which the Kibaki and Kenyatta administrations elected to pay for rather than prosecute. Since then we have seen growing corruption in multiple sectors, even with the sugar and charcoal smuggling issues involving the Kenya Defense Forces as reported by UN monitors and the new Journalists for Justice report. Police reform under the 2010 constitution has been sidetracked by politicians who prefer other appoaches to those established in the law.
Are false Kenyan identity and other documents still readily available for purchase?
Having apologized for having gotten our shoes in the way of the vomit, donors to Kenya’s government are now finally alarmed again about the (ongoing) corruption
It’s not so much that I’m jaded, it’s just that I have watched this movie before–and even been an “extra” of sorts in one of the previous remakes.
Yes, corruption is obviously getting even worse within this Kenyan administration than within the last. But that was also true when I lived in Kenya during the end of the first Kibaki administration and into the beginning of the second.
There are several readily apparent reasons. For instance, when I lived in Kenya I made the acquaintance of a Western expat whose spouse was in the tourism business. Prior to the 2007 vote count corruption and violence, the tourism business was booming. But corruption was up as a cost of doing business as it was explained to me because to operate you had to pay off a second generation, too–the kids of the senior politicians. Presumably this generational expansion has continued. Why wouldn’t it?
The year before I moved to Kenya the UK and US envoys had been outspokenly opposed to the corruption, in the context of the Anglo Leasing revelations by John Githongo of massive corruption involving national security procurements, touching our own security interests aside from our sensibilities about criminal behavior, along with the outrageous shenanigans involving the Artur Brothers, and the Standard media raid, among others. The British envoy even offered the memorably colorful “vomit on our (the donors’) shoes” metaphor about the extent of the gluttonous “eating”.
But by the time I arrived in mid-2007 things were different. New personnel led the diplomatic missions. On the US side we apparently helped Moi and Kibaki get back together, and hosted Interior Minister John Michuki, of “rattling the snake” fame, who had taken credit for the Standard raid, on a security tour of the U.S. Michuki represented Kibaki at our Embassy’s Fourth of July party, where Moi unofficially planted himself to catch the receiving line.
And then we looked the other way at the corruption of the Electoral Commission of Kenya. Ambassador Ranneberger made sure to get his predecessor Ambassador Bellamy removed from our IRI Election Observation Mission on the basis that he was “perceived as anti-government”. Bellamy had spoken out on the corruption, in particular the Standard raid. The week before the vote, Ranneberger noted for the Kenyan public that Kenya was “on track” in fighting the vice of corruption, that we had had Enron in the U.S., that prosecutions for Anglo Leasing and Goldenburg could take time, and that the World Bank had given the Kibaki administration an award for procurement reform (of all things) and that he expected a “free and fair” election. And then we tried at first to sell the ECK’s election “count” even though we knew full well that it was bogus. When that didn’t fly, we supported “power sharing” so long as there was no new election before Kibaki’s full second term was up. According to a news report from Nairobi years later from stolen cables from “Wikileaks” we issued a couple of “travel bans” based on alleged evidence of bribery against two of the ECK commissioners, but we never disclosed this action or the evidence, why we singled out these two or anything else about the matter.
During the post election violence a diplomat explained to me that the reason many of the younger pols in Kibaki’s PNU coalition were against a power sharing settlement was that they didn’t want to share the secondary ministry appointments. Ultimately by adding opposition politicians into the second Kibaki administration through “power sharing” with extra ministries you further expanded the multigenerational set of stomachs to let eat. One way to look at the settlement naturally has been that Kibaki and Raila were willing to stop the fighting (so long as Kibaki retained with further ambiguity the full second term Presidency which the ECK had delivered to him) and the rest were bribed to acquiesce.
So you cannot tell me with a straight face that the diplomatic position of the United States in 2007-08 was to “oppose” corruption as a high rather than a subordinated priority.
After being stung by criticism from the election debacle, Ranneberger was reborn as an outspoken “reform agenda” campaigner for his extended tour on through the passage of a new constitution. He compiled dossiers on money laundering and drug smuggling through politico/business interests and encouraged action, albeit to no avail. His successors quietly moved on, however, and we helped sell a new badly handled election in 2013 by a new, but probably more pervasively corrupted electoral authority. We helped pay for expensive technology that was doomed by procurement fraud but kept quiet. The British Serious Fraud Office successfully prosecuted one of their companies and its owners for bribes on other election procurements, but the Kenyan administration has taken no action to follow up and we have kept our silence.
With time, we have come again to affectionately embrace our usual suspect “partners”, with new programs headquartered in our favorite African city of Nairobi. A photo op in the Oval Office with POTUS and FLOTUS for the Kenyan President and First Lady last year, followed this summer by a glowing official Presidential visit to Nairobi with a telegenic dance party at State House. Never mind what we said before; please can we give you more? Some eloquent speech about the cost of corruption, safely abstract from the burgeoning accumulation of years of specific cases on the impunity docket. Yes we can dance with this new set of shoes without even looking down at the vomit.
Surely then it can be no surprise that things have gotten that much worse. With a new report by Kenyan journalists on the longstanding implication of Kenyan Defense Forces which we help underwrite in Jubaland in the sugar and charcoal smuggling rackets, and fresh levels of embarrassment from the international press from the National Youth Service, irregular handling of bond proceeds amid rising debt levels, more land grabbing and another looted bank, all with a new election cycle approaching, the season has turned again and it is the time for furrowed brows. Time for the U.S. to lead a donor group to call on the current version of the anti-corruption authority. To talk again of “visa bans” and offers again to assist in “asset recovery”.
Instead of another remake, could this be a sequel offering a surprise ending, with say, even a few villains in jail, or at least less rich, as a cautionary tale for some and a bit of hope and inspiration for others? Or is this just another iteration of “the formula” in which the sheriff rides into town, frowns at the drunken brawl, then passes along to enjoy the cinematic scenery on the way home?
Only time will tell. I do think we genuinely would prefer to be against the corruption rather than aligned with it. We just lose our nerve and get distracted by other priorities that seem more immediate. Making a dent in Kenya’s entrenched culture of impunity would take a long hard slog, in the face of bitter opposition formal and informal. It would be messy and likely involve putting up with a bit of embarrassment–it could involve some risk and actual cost. In any event it would take a good while for us to convince the players that we had become serious.